Maruti Suzuki rolls out AI-powered virtual assistant named ‘S-Assist’ for Nexa customers

The country’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL) on Thursday launched a virtual car assistant app called ‘S-Assist’ based on artificial intelligence to help in post-purchase experience to customers. Available free of cost to customers of the company’s cars sold through its premium Nexa outlets, the S-Assist (accessed via the Maruti Suzuki Rewards app) provides multimedia content including do-it-yourself videos, digital literature, and workshop assistance right on the user’s smartphone. Besides, the app gives owners access to over 4,120 Maruti Suzuki workshops across India, which empowers them to call and navigate to their nearest workshop at the time of distress, the company said in a statement. Commenting on the launch, MSIL Senior Executive Director, Service, Partho Banerjee said through the S-Assist, customers can book services for their vehicles, home pick-up, and delivery, and get estimates through the digital assistant. [caption id=“attachment_10013471” align=“alignnone” width=“1920”]  Nexa customers can use the S-Assistant functionality free of charge. Image: Maruti Suzuki[/caption] “At present, we are offering this for Nexa customers as it is available in English. We will soon offer it to our Arena (mass segment retail outlet chain) customers as we are working to make the S-Assist available in vernacular languages too,” he said. It is a complimentary service that offers quick access to vehicle features, troubleshooting, and driving tips on customers’ smartphones. It brings real-time information to customers for their vehicle-related queries, he added. Customers can have easy and quick navigation to the digital copy of vehicle owner’s manual, information on warning signs via S-Assist while also doing a picture search by uploading pictures of any vehicle part on their smartphone to get an instant explanation of possible causes of the problem in the vehicle. The app has been co-created with a Delhi-based AI start-up, Xane.AI, which has been nurtured under the company’s innovation program, MAIL (Mobility and Automobile Innovation Lab) launched in January 2019 to foster innovation through collaboration with start-ups. This is one of the 13 projects being pursued by the company to help budding start-ups incubate and launch their ideas, MSIL added.